by Leigh Witchel
Ballet Collective has always been a class act. Consistently the group, led by New York City Ballet soloist Troy Schumacher, has given performances with attention not only to choreography, but designs, staging, musical playing and commissioned scores. This season, it joined forces with a contemporary orchestra, The Knights; along with eight dancers from NYCB, the orchestra fielded 24 players who performed on an equal footing.
The company’s concerts have a controlling metaphor, this year’s, “Faraway,” was inspired by the Overview Effect, the dizzying and humbling shift in perspective of astronauts when they see the blue marble of earth from space. Our journey started off with a promising ballet from a new choreographer.
The opening music for Preston Chamblee’s “Scorpio Desert,” “Glaciers,” by Paul Moravec, sounded like a sirocco of insects. The choreography had a similar rush. The dancers began grouped in a right angle. They dispersed and then returned one by one, leaping, racing, exiting. Their business felt like an interpretive dance for Stephen Sondheim’s “Another Hundred People.”
At first Chamblee seemed to be doing mostly traffic control, but capably. The cast made a starburst, danced urgent jetés and tight turns. An adagio for three women didn’t change vocabulary, just slowed it down. But in a duet for NYCB apprentice Cainan Weber and soloist Erica Pereira, Chamblee’s tone got interesting. As the two slowly extended their legs, with no pasture in sight, Chamblee was pastoral. A group built, then threw off another duet and Chamblee’s precocity looked suspiciously like maturity as he created, on a dark bare stage, a featureless Illyria.
The group watched one woman who broke away. She seemed disaffected as she reached and yearned. Another woman came to her and they all rejoined the group without conflict. It wasn’t a narrative; it was a dance, yet it hit cleanly the emotions and narrative that ballet can express.
The beautiful score gave Chamblee a clear map, and he followed it skillfully. We knew were close to an end when the dancers returned to the opening pose, and then dancers walked back, then slowly off in darkness. Young choreographers so often get tripped up trying to get three kitchen sinks’ worth of feels in, but Chamblee, who started choreographing last year, seemed precociously aware of what ballet can – and can’t – hold in it.
A quartet of four string players played a molecular entr’acte, four excerpts from “Signs, Games and Messages” by György Kurtág. This led to a repeat performance of Gabrielle Lamb’s 2017 “Orange” for a quintet of dancers, including Chamblee, to a piano quintet by Caleb Burhans. Chamblee started off in the center on the floor, writhing. At some point everyone wound up on the floor in spotlight. Burhan’s music moved in simple progressions – a hymn to Windham Hill. Everyone took a slow lunge, and gently touched each other on the head. Davide Riccardo danced a solo that folded in on himself; India Bradley led the others in angular movements. Lamb’s work explored insecurity and neurosis, but as a thing of beauty – that calmed down to something more lyrical. The Overview Effect may have shown up at the end, where Chamblee danced with Emilie Gerrity in slow motion. She left him as the lights dimmed.
The next entr’acte was played by its composers, violinist Christina Courtin and flautist Alex Sopp, who also sang wordlessly. How influenced by pop music classical music has become. Schumacher then offered his own brief encore from ‘17, a pas de deux from “Translation” with Mary Thomas MacKinnon in sneakers and Mira Nadon on pointe – something that was harder to see in the psychedelic light show of the original production.
MacKinnon leaned on Nadon, who supported her: a risky choice as a pointe shoe is less stable than a sneaker. The two women experimented with canonical ballet partnering; extension into rond de jambe and Nadon did a simple carry of MacKinnon before the duet morphed into a double solo that ended with the women’s backs to us, moving their arms like a celestial clock.
The performing space in the GK Arts Center is a deep rectangle, so Schumacher took “Faraway” literally. He seated us at one end and threw open the back so we could see mirrors at the other side. It gave the sense that we were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. At times it felt as if he choreographed the work with our side as his front, and then tipped it for performance to give yet another shift in perspective. The costumes by Karen Young were a direct reference to the title and the Overview Effect: dappled blue unitards that looked like maps of the earth from space. They were derived from aerial photographs by Zaria Forman of ice in Greenland and Antarctica.
The strings scratched the opening of Judd Greenstein’s energetic score. A trio of tall women, Bradley, MacKinnon and Nadon, moved slowly towards us. The rest of the cast had a brief entry before the work returned to the trio, moving slowly forward on point with their arms out like probes with instruments taking readings. They walked towards us gingerly on quarter toe, one hand in front before the scene blacked out. It was a small letdown that Schumacher pulled back from the strong perspective into something less unusual, but he had already taken a back seat to the production two years ago in “Translation” and perhaps he didn’t want to make “Private Domain.”
“Faraway” moved into an allegro featuring Pereira with her legs shooting outwards. In the midst of this the three women made a looping entry and departed like comets on an elliptical orbit. The idea of a distant perspective prompted Schumacher to do a lot more thinking about group work than he once did, but also his NYCB commissions have required that – and he’s learned. The trio moved through again, this time crossing and leaving on the opposite side.
Weber shone in a duet with Nadon. The two came leaping in; he had a gorgeous jump that was both stretchy and explosive as he sprang into a full split. Pereira joined and left them, while Weber and Nadon revolved like planets. Asking the two of them to do tricky partnering with disparate heights was dodgier. Pereira crossed again, turning as the lights dimmed. The two joined her and both women dipped low before taking Weber and dragging him off as the lights faded out. This has been a good year for Pereira; she looked confident here, but she has also looked more assured at her day job at NYCB.
Riccardo and MacKinnon danced a slow duet. Though they were right next to us, it felt as if they were at the back of the stage – another perspective shift. Holding hands they progressed slowly back to the mirrors. As the music slowed, they looked at us and posed; it recalled the two figures on the plaque sent as a message into the interstellar void by the Voyager space probes decades ago.
Schumacher brought the work to a close with sections for Weber, MacKinnon and Riccardo. He made everyone look good, though he gave Pereira a solo with Cunningham-like contractions to the side, and it was the only thing that frazzled her. Everyone finished in unison, spreading out over the stage into their own orbits to end.
After nearly a decade, the unquestionable accomplishment of Ballet Collective is the level of the productions, both in professional luster and intent. You won’t find more thoughtful or better-produced work at twice the cost.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Scorpio Desert,” “Orange,” “Faraway” – Ballet Collective & The Knights
GK Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY
October 23, 2019
Cover: “Faraway.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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